


Under Stars

by fereldanwench



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Age Difference, Awkward Romance, F/M, Gen, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 14:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11899866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fereldanwench/pseuds/fereldanwench
Summary: Sara Ryder and Harry Carlyle navigate a tipsy encounter before leaving the Milky Way.





	Under Stars

It was the first time in a decade that Harry Carlyle had set foot on Earth.

As a renowned neurosurgeon, he had been splitting his time over the past ten years between spearheading the latest advancements of neuroradiology in the Citadel's own Huerta Memorial Hospital while simultaneously undergoing rigorous screening and training for the enterprising Andromeda Initiative. With only a month before the mass departure from the Milky Way, however, the Initiative's human leadership paused their frenzied preparation for a 600-year-long journey to a new galaxy, and instead put their efforts into coordinating commemorative events across humanity's home planet. Although they were touted as celebrations for mankind's bravest pioneers, Harry knew for many of the colonists, these would be living wakes--A time to rejoice in their lives and the lives of their loved ones, but also a time for poignant, and permanent, farewells.

The last time he was here, he had said goodbye to his father under similar, and yet entirely different, circumstances.

To his surprise, Harry found himself with an invitation to one of the most exclusive affairs, hosted by none other than the Initiative visionary herself, Jien Garson. The ritzy party brought him out to Val d'Orcia in Tuscany, one of the few regions on Earth that had never been over-encumbered by urban sprawl or razed by humanity's massive carbon footprint. The venue itself was a lone villa settled a top the serene, emerald hills, dimly illuminated by the soft glow of its exterior lights--The only beacons of sentient existence in miles. He wasn't sure who the property belonged to, Jien or perhaps one of the enigmatic and endlessly wealthy benefactors of the Initiative, but it was a captivating sight all the same.

Harry paused before he entered the estate, rubbing a hand across his dinner jacket to smooth any errant wrinkles, and then breathing into the palm of his hand. He sniffed, breathed again, and sniffed once more. Harry popped a mint in his mouth. _Just in case._

The inside of the villa was just as impressive as its exterior: an open-floor plan with marble tiles and floor-to-ceiling windows running along the far side of the house, offering a brilliant view of the night sky settling over the verdant acres of empty, undulating fields. Modern décor and furniture, timeless style fused with the latest high-tech function, filled the space, and Harry made it a point to locate his host first and the nearest bar second.

Although Harry generally fashioned himself a people person--it kind of came with the job--he admittedly felt a little out of his league in present company. His mother used to tell him, sometimes to the point of banality, that everyone he'd ever meet would have something they could teach him, and the older he got, the more often Harry found truth to that sentiment. But he still had a healthy, if maybe occasionally overactive ego, and he also liked to think that _he_ could have something to offer others. It was a prospect that seemed less and less likely in the presence of the Initiative's best and brightest.

Harry made the expected rounds, thanking his host and complimenting the venue (it did belong to Garson, it turned out), and introducing himself to some of the financial patrons of the Initiative. He spent some time with Cora Harper, the Pathfinder's second. A fascinating, exceptional woman—He had never known another human to serve alongside the famed asari commandos—If not just a _little_ too by the book for his personal tastes. As she shared a story about the Pathfinder's own eccentric brilliance, it occurred to Harry that he hadn't seen Alec Ryder or his adult children since he arrived.

Harry would hardly call Alec a friend, but they had been working closely together for the past five years, ensuring Harry was fully trained to offer support for the neural AI implant Ellen Ryder had conceptualized before her passing. He also met their son once, albeit under completely unrelated affairs: Scott had apparently "partied too hard" one night and wound up in Huerta for severe dehydration. Sympathetic, Harry pulled some strings to get him moved up in the queue and on his way before word got to his commanding officer. He'd still yet to meet Scott's twin sister, Sara, who seemed to be serving limitless assignments during her final tenure as a Systems Alliance operative.

"Well, speak of the devil," Cora said. Harry turned around to see Alec striding in through the main threshold, flanked by Scott and who he assumed was Sara.

The Ryder men looked predictably sharp, but Sara? Sara was utterly striking in her backless cocktail dress, with her dark hair was swept off her face in a low bun and her lips stained with a burgundy gloss. She did not look anything like the 20-something kid in her dossier.

Uncomfortable with the intrusive thought, he swallowed a burning mouthful of whiskey and pointedly redirected his attention back to present company. The conversation unfortunately darkened, starting with whispered gossip of Alec's dishonorable discharge, which turned Cora away in polite but firm disapproval. Then it further devolved into arguments over another infamous N7 and her role in the geth attack on the Citadel, ultimately swinging around to a full political debate about the usefulness of the Council. Harry used his empty glass as a diplomatic pretext to excuse himself from the exchange.

He paused almost mid-step when he saw Sara, unattended by her family, leaning against the bar. Her eyes flickered towards him before she brought a glass to her dark cherry lips. _Vodka tonic?_ Harry wondered, while a small voice of caution told him he didn't need to know what Sara Ryder likes to drink. _No_ , he thought, catching the distinctly piney, astringent aroma. _Gin tonic_ , he noted, in spite of his rational self.

"Another whiskey, please. Neat," Harry said to the bartender and then looked up at Sara, realizing that she was taller than him in her heels. "You're Sara, right?"  
  
She nodded, and he offered her his hand. "Doctor Harry Carlyle. I don't think we've met yet."  
  
Sara accepted the gesture, her grip firm and confident, and Harry noticed how calloused her palm felt against his own.  
  
"Hi, Doctor Carlyle," she said coolly, almost wearily, in a way that kind of sounded more like "Fuck off, old man" than hello.

He almost laughed in spite of himself; Harry didn't know exactly what he was expecting, but her response was disappointing nonetheless. He wanted to talk to her--He had wanted to meet her even before he saw her swagger into the room with more quiet charisma than one person should have, to talk about her responsibilities in the Alliance, to share ideas about the Initiative, to get to know what kind of person he would be working with in a whole new galaxy. But Harry was long past the days when he'd take an aloof rejection from a 25-year-old as a challenge and not the benevolent warning it really was. _For the best_ , he thought.

So he smiled, lifted his glass in a silent acknowledgment of her wishes, and returned to the party.

* * *

 

After his third whiskey, or maybe it was his fifth, Harry was feeling that familiar diffused heat rise around his neck and cheeks. He still had enough sense to hear that some words were starting to flow out with a little more ease than he'd like, and he took the opportunity to have water and get some fresh air; the softly lit courtyard behind the estate had piqued his curiosity since his arrival, and this seemed as good an excuse to investigate as any. Outside, he discovered that it offered an even more beautiful sight of the Tuscan countryside than the entrance of the villa, and Harry was finding himself a little delighted with the dark reflecting pool that ran the length of the estate, capturing the dim reflections of the stars above.

He walked alongside the shallow water, undoing the buttons at the top of his stiff collar, but halted when he saw another guest sitting on a marble bench a few paces from him. He noticed the expanse of skin from shoulder blades to the small of her back first, followed by the bottle of gin next to her and her high heels on the ground near her bare feet. Harry was about to turn around, seeing nothing but utter disaster coming from saying anything to Sara Ryder in his current state, but she turned around sharply, as if he was intruding on a private moment.

"Sorry," he said, lifting his hands apologetically. "I didn't know anyone was out here."

Sara exhaled and shrugged. "It's not like you're trespassing on my personal Italian villa in the middle of nowhere," she conceded, a little contempt in her characterization of the estate. She squinted. "Doctor Carlyle, right? I'm sorry if I was rude earlier."

"'Harry' is fine," he said. "And no harm done. I'm guessing this isn't really your kind of party?"

"What gave it away?" she asked dryly.

"Oh. I don't know. There's something about sitting outside in the dark, alone, with a bottle of gin that just doesn't seem to scream 'I'm having a great time here.'" Harry gave her the most charming grin he could muster.

She laughed and tapped the bottle accusingly. "Yeah. We'll have to work on my discretion."

Sara smiled, and he smiled back, but a precarious silence settled. Both were seemingly uncertain where this conversation should go. _If_ it should even go. Harry caught sight of what he thought was an old optical telescope directly in front of her, quieted the sober voice telling him to go back inside, and pointed at it.

"That looks like an antique. Do you know if it works?"

Sara put her hand on the barrel, almost lovingly. "I guess it is. It's from the mid-twentieth century--The lenses are a little cloudy, but yeah, it still works. Hey." Her face lit up, her eyes wide and bright and daring, even in the dark. "You want to see our new home?"

_Absolutely._

"Sure."

She lifted from the bench and gestured that he should take her seat. He obliged, tugging on his trousers as sat down and feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious when his knees cracked, but Sara didn't seem to notice. She poured herself a small glass of gin and then sat down close beside him, looking up at the stars. She pointed a finger towards one constellation and then moved it across the sky to another.

"We're about a month out for the best time of year to view Andromeda," Sara said, her voice sounding a little distant as she peered into the glittering abyss. "But it is visible, even to the naked eye. There. See that glowing speck? Oval-shaped--It's kind of soft around the edges?"

"Maybe?" Harry squinted his eyes, trying to focus around her fingertip.

"Look through the telescope. You might need to adjust the angle a little, but it should already be in focus."

"I think… Oh, yeah. Yeah, there it is." It was still faint, a smear of light with a single bright center, but beautiful all the same. Harry had seen plenty of hi-resolution images of the spiral galaxy that would put this view to shame, but there was something special about the sight, sharing it with a lovely woman on one of his last nights in the Milky Way. "Wow," he murmured.

A burst of clapping and muffled voices drew his attention back to the activity in the villa. He glanced over his shoulder, watching Jien Garson lift a flute of champagne towards another guest obstructed from his view. Harry silently chided himself, knowing it was social faux pas to be absent from a party being held in their honor, but finding himself infinitely more curious about Sara, the young Alliance operative who apparently knew astrometry and how to work damn near ancient telescopes.

"I'm afraid that's my best parlor trick," she said, not sounding modest at all in spite of the claim. "I didn't mean to keep you from the party--Don't feel obligated to stay out here."

He felt a little wrong for being so drawn to her: a little wrong for noticing that she was pretty, a little wrong for knowing that she was twenty years his junior, and a little wrong for not feeling as deterred by that as he knew he should be. What was doing a far better job of convincing himself to leave was that Harry didn't want to overstay his welcome. He didn't want to make her uncomfortable.

Then again, she was the one who invited him to sit next to her.

_She wants you to stay, you idiot._

"There's no obligation," he finally said. "But if you want to be alone--"

"--I don’t." She knocked back the last mouthful of gin in her glass.

_You should leave, you idiot._

"So." Sara twisted her hips to better face him while she poured herself another drink. "Including this time, how many times have you been asked why are you going to Andromeda?"

He chuckled. Harry had been rehearsing answers to that question since he signed on to the Initiative—pretentious replies about squeezing their current galaxy for all its worth and wanting more, jokes about the biggest mid-life crisis a man could have, valiant statements about what it means to be a human and only know a tiny fraction of the universe—but they all seemed insufficient in her presence.

"Rough estimate? Two thousand, maybe? Two thousand and one now." He rubbed his chin. "I feel like I've done all I can here. I think I can offer more in the Initiative where I won't keep hitting dead-ends or people half my age beating me to the punch." She gave him a wry look. "No offense."

"What kind of self-important ass thinks he can't do anything else in an entire galaxy?" She asked unabashedly and then added over the rim of her glass, lips poised to drink, "No offense."

Harry laughed at her candor.

"You could just call it a mid-life crisis," he conceded. "A trip to a new galaxy is a hell of a thing to let pass you by."

"No argument there."

"Why are you doing it?"

"You know my father."

"Not very well."

"Well enough to get my point, I'm sure."

Harry nodded. Alec was no doubt a difficult parent. His motivations for everything he did seemed noble, but Harry could see how his determination could be overwhelmingly unyielding. Especially to a child. 

"So a doctor, huh?" Sara gave him a challenging look. "Like a real doctor, or…?"

Harry feigned an affronted look back at her. "Or a pretend doctor?"

"You know what I mean. Do you save lives or did you just go to school for too long?"

He laughed. "Can I say both? I'm a neurologist. I've spent most of my career practicing and researching at Huerta Memorial on the Citadel, until your dad reached out to me."

"And neurology has hit its peak in the Milky Way?"

"For my lifetime? Yeah, I think so. What about you? You served with the Alliance, right?"

She poured herself another drink. "Yep. Trained operative. In theory, at least. In practice, I usually just baby-sat teams of hack scientists and broke up the occasional raider assault in the Terminus System."

"You didn't enjoy what you did?"

She scoffed. "I would have, if I had been treated based on my own merits, and not _his_." She thrust a finger over her shoulder, but Harry didn't have to see who she was pointing at to know who she was talking about.

"Are you leaving anyone behind?"

"Not really," he said honestly. "Never started my own family. Parents are both gone. No siblings. I have a few cousins, distant relatives--They have protocol for their descendants if we can make contact with the Milky Way once we get settled. A few colleagues I was fond of. And a betta fish. I gave her to an intern's kid--He liked stopping by my office to feed her."

"That was sweet of you."

"Seemed like the right thing to do. Your turn."

Sara sighed deeply and fidgeted, rolling her shoulders up into a stronger posture. "There… Well, we ended it a while ago, anyway. And I had a few friends from training. We had been going separate ways for a while--They settled down and started having babies, a real family, that old story. But we still had the occasional vid call, still met up for drinks when we could. Honestly, we've been growing farther apart for a while. This is probably just speeding up the inevitable."

"It's not an easy choice," Harry replied neutrally, piecing together the obvious but not pressing for details. 

"It wasn't a choice at all," she muttered before knocking back the gin in her glass.

Harry furrowed his brow at her. "You almost sound like you don't want to go."

"No, I do. Are you kidding? This is the chance of a lifetime. I just wish there was one thing in my life I could do that didn't revolve around Alec fucking Ryder."

She put her face in her hands and shook her head. "I don't know why I'm telling you this," Sara mumbled into her palms. 

"It's because I'm a great listener," he joked.

"Or because I drank my weight in gin."

"The more likely culprit," Harry agreed. "I can get you some water."

"No, I think delayed sobriety sounds like a better plan. When the embarrassment settles in, I'd rather you not be sitting right next to me."

"You haven't done anything embarrassing," he told her.

"You're sweet," she said again, meeting his eyes with a heavy gaze.

 Under his own inebriated fog, Harry indulged Sara and himself, keeping her stare longer than he should have. He noticed a faint, irregular scar under her left eye before a flash of temperance told him he was probably indulging himself more than her. As another distant eruption of applause drew her attention away from him, Harry decided it was time to listen to his voice of reason, lest it go hoarse from screaming at him.

"Here, take this with you when you go inside," Sara said, handing him the bottle of gin. "I do _not_ need anymore."

Harry chuckled quietly, relieved he didn't need to explain anything, but also a little charmed by her own self-awareness. He grabbed the neck of the bottle, consciously avoiding any awkward brush against her fingers.

"Take care, Sara."

"You, too, Harry. I'll see you on the Hyperion."

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping I'll be able to write their story to completion, but I am a pretty capricious writer so who knows? But Dr. Carlyle charmed me right away, and I do love a good ill-advised rare pair.


End file.
